Fourth Friday: January

Why is this edition so late? Girl, the strike. But also, last week was one of those week’s where every free moment I expected to have got taken up by something else. No regerts, but all apologies.

This has been one of the darkest months of this regime. Trump is absolutely losing the public opinion war, which means he and his thugs will be upping the violence in the coming days. Stay safe, stay warm, and stay connected.

Relatedly: Stand With Minnesota compiled a massive and well-organized list of ways to, you know, stand with Minnesota.

And now for all the dope things I wrote, read, watched, and cooked to get me through this awful month!

Contents include: some incredible reporting from the New York Times; a hidden gem from the ‘90s starring Toni Collette, Lisa Kudrow, and Parker Posey; the new-to-me YouTube channel that’s bringing me joy; a lethal review of Melania, the “documentary” about the “First Lady”; and an original recipe from yours truly!

• A spiritual sequel to my essay about the crumbling aesthetics of fascism

• This month’s Terrible Tuesday: my first and last Tyler Perry movie

• Unpacking my deep ambivalence about legacy media and mainstream journalism (written while drinking from my I ♥️ NPR mug)

• My top 10 movies of 2025, with a few honourable mentions

• A celebration of Tom Holland’s Lip Sync Battle, because we need that, all of us.

  

• When I ran for city council, I got a lot of xenophobic pushback that since my parents are Nigerian, I couldn’t represent my local community because I’m not really from here. Five years later, my state’s Board of Elections is considering removing “presumptive noncitizens” from the voter rolls.

• From podcast crush Peter Shamshiri, who also writes a fantastic newsletter: Abolishing ICE may be the minimum, but if there’s no retribution, we’ll learn the exact same nothing we keep learning.

• The goddamn New York Times has justified my continued subscription by publishing some incredible journalism, and incredibly effective data visualization: “How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000.”